On Propaganda
Steve Green on the propaganda controversy I posted about yesterday:
Jeff Goldstein has more:
Read both posts.
I think one thing a lot of people are overlooking is the fact that the Department of Defense is claiming that all of the information in the reports is true, and I haven't seen one shred of evidence from any source to suggest that they're not. Were the reports balanced in that the reported the "bad news" with the "good news?" Probably not, but then one gets the idea that there is already more than enough reporting of the "bad news" in Iraq.
Giving giving facts about the progress being made in Iraq a little attention would seem like a good thing for Iraq and our mission.
I stand by the point I made in my first post on this: The media's problem with this reporting is that its too positive about a war they hate.
If a nuke were to go off in New York or Los Angeles or even Des Moines tomorrow, do you doubt that even President Kerry (cough, cough) would hesitate before retaliating in kind? Oh, but that would be retaliation, wouldn't it? And would it not therefore be a fair response? And what about propaganda? It's not as if the enemy doesn't use it – so why should our government be so restrained? Especially when our stuff is pretty damn innocent?
Jeff Goldstein has more:
Taking this parallel one step further, let me add that our use of propaganda seems to me to fit this paradigm perfectly, insofar as we have used it to beat back the anti-American rhetoric coming not only from the Arab world, but from the western press as well.
Or to put it more bluntly, this campaign was designed to retaliate not only against enemy propaganda in Iraq and other parts of the middle east, but ironically (and sadly) against our very own media, whose coverage has been almost uniformly sensationalistic and dire.
Read both posts.
I think one thing a lot of people are overlooking is the fact that the Department of Defense is claiming that all of the information in the reports is true, and I haven't seen one shred of evidence from any source to suggest that they're not. Were the reports balanced in that the reported the "bad news" with the "good news?" Probably not, but then one gets the idea that there is already more than enough reporting of the "bad news" in Iraq.
Giving giving facts about the progress being made in Iraq a little attention would seem like a good thing for Iraq and our mission.
I stand by the point I made in my first post on this: The media's problem with this reporting is that its too positive about a war they hate.
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